Summer of Love and questions that the FAQ says should not be asked

Question

Recently Does C# give you “less rope to hang yourself” than C++? was asked - I thought the question was too wide in scope, voted to close and commented as such:

From the FAQ: Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.. I believe this qualifies as such a question...

The OP, several days later responded with:

@Oded Being a n00b I almost deleted my question because of your comments. It was only happenstance that I did not -- I was interrupted, then took Sunday off. By Monday there were over 500 views, 7 answers, lots of up votes and 2 favorites. I humbly submit that immediately commenting new questions with a hypertechnical meta reason that it shouldn't have been asked actually damages the community more than it helps. If the question had been sitting for days or even hours it might have been more appropriate, but the above comments happened within minutes of the original post.

The question is currently open, has over 800 views, 7 answers and only two close votes.

• Was I wrong to write what I did? Does it go against the Summer of Love?
• Does the question belong on Programmers and if so, why?

I am not trying to close the question - I am looking for some enlightenment here. I see that both the OP and I have good points and that yes, the question appears to be a popular one and has some great answers. But I still feel it is overly broad in scope and not right for Programmers (or Stack Exchange in general).

Answer 1

The Summer of Nonsense

Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole "niceness" theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!).

We can't be walking on eggshells, afraid we might offend someone, just because we politely expressed an opinion on the topicality of a question. We disqualify types & categories of questions not because we are elitist --------¹, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.

A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of foo vs bar questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.

One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific.

Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, I went ahead and removed it. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...

Views, favourites and popularity in general

Ben already mentioned that there are troubles with popularity but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to bikeshed questions than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion.

Having earned 17 gold Publicists badges on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality > quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question². Why wouldn't they?

Well... Let's see some examples:

1. Is ORM an Anti-Pattern? (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)

   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I said it when I first read it:

   "Your question is very broad and ambiguous", as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.

   I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from posting an answer, one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a good answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues.

   Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).

2. What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately? (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views, deleted)

   A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was closed and re-opened, and then closed again. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, my +39 answer! Yes, once again I was bored!

   But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately:

   • The third footnote, expanded reads as: Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer).
   • At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense!

   This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers³. I deleted the question a little after I posted this, as it quickly got 2 delete votes.

I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our community blog:

1. How we managed 24 software development trainees

   An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.

2. 20 controversial programming opinions

   A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on Math and Code Golf), at least one retort, a vibrant discussion on Reddit and a translation in Chinese!

   A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...

The question in question (about time ;)

It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the foo vs bar flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the "which technology is better" clause in our FAQ. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description:

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.

This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more⁴ to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it?

And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our FAQ:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.

To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of⁵, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate.

Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did not turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I probably wouldn't have mod closed it.

Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)

On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can vote to re-open think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place.

That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:

• You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion.
• It generated this Meta discussion⁶ that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.
• It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would.
• And you got some rep from it ;)

It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)

I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P

The end.

_{¹ Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Love thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh]
² Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.
³ Although I must say that Paul Nathan's answer is highly amusing
⁴ And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...
⁵ How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?
⁶ ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!}

Answer 2

Askers yield

As a prolific answerer, you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.

For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand:

...we’re determined to keep question quality high, even at the cost of refusing a little sand. It’s true that you can’t have Q&A without questions, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...

We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to answer questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?

My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker yield ¹ and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.

Answerers drive by rules

Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.

The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.

Authoritative references ^{1, 2} for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:

• That rudeness will not be tolerated:

  See someone being rude? Flag it!

• That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:

  Everyone loves to quote from the FAQ’s etiquette section, particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:

  Be honest.

  Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.

---

Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.

As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the FAQ action items and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:

Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.

Answer 3

You weren't rude, which is the only criteria for anything "Summer of Love" related, so no you didn't do anything wrong there. Personally I don't think you did anything wrong at all, though an optional addendum explaining how the question could be improved would be even more helpful.

And frankly, discouraging you from trying to improve questions and the site, is pretty darn rude. But it's just a natural defensive reaction askers often have when questions are closed/questioned/downvoted. Don't take it personally.

There are always popular questions that don't fit Stack Exchange's format. Their existence, and the existence of upvotes, does not invalidate your comment. See The Trouble with Popularity.

While an interesting topic of discussion, I still believe the question could have been much more focused. This would leave the possibility for great answers, but level the playing field by making it clear what you're answering. When answers cover radically different ground, as is often the case in too-broad questions, voting tends to indicate popularity over the best, most practical answer to the question at hand.

Answer 4

I am the OP of that question. First of all, I have developed a great deal of respect for everyone involved in the original question and the meta question so far, as well as for the SE technology itself. How these edge cases are handled is exactly what separates good communities from bad.

A Little Background...

I happen to have borne witness to the first 70 episodes of the Stack Overflow podcast which chronicles Jeff and Joel's evolving philosophy of the goal of Stack Exchange. I think the salient part of their philosophy for this particular matter can be summarized as follows:

We want Stack Overflow to be the canonical source for the answers to long-tail questions.

I'm paraphrasing Joel there, but I don't think I'm putting words in his mouth (at least not as of the recording of the first 50 or so podcast episodes).

Why programmers.stackexchange.com?

In Good Subjective, Bad Subjective which is linked to from the FAQ, he writes:

"But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers created a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions."

That sister site is indeed programmers.stackexchange.com.

An Informed Decision

The question I asked came to be after about 40 hours of research on very closely related subject matter. I was a tacit expert on exactly that question (and little else). The following things were clear to me when I clicked submit:

1. even a half-decent answer to my question would fill a real void in documented knowledge (i.e. this is a long-tail topic)
2. my question was carefully crafted such that answers would fill the void exactly
3. the bounded nature of the subject matter itself meant that a canonical answer could be achieved in the SE format
4. the question was outside the letter of the FAQ and "good subjective guidelines".
5. the question was within the spirit of Jeff and Joel's philosophy for stack overflow
6. programmers.stackexchange.com was the most appropriate place to ask the question

Of course, the immediate comments cast doubt on that clarity but chance avoided self-deletion of my question.

What I Think We Should Learn From This

1. There is a class of questions that appear prima facie to be too broadly scoped, but are in fact quite nicely bounded by the nature of the topic itself.
2. It might take an expert on the subject matter to determine whether a question fits that class.
3. If it is possible that a question is of that class, wait a few hours or days before going all meta on it. This will allow the most expert readers on the topic to provide some feedback.

This really doesn't have to be overthought—just wait a few hours or days and then, if it's crickets and confusion in there, cite the FAQ.

Answer 5

Sorry for being so "political," but I'd like to address your question from two sides.

The first thing is that is not (on most counts) a high quality question, and a very good case could be made that it should be closed on that basis.

The second thing is that it is hard to close--for reasons basically out of your control. And that is, the questioner quoted Joel Spolsky, who is a recognized tech guru (like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs), and more to the point, is the "big cheese" (along with Jeff Atwood), on this site.

If Joel supported closing the question, that would be that. Absent such support, the question was given an "aura" that would attract upvotes and make it more popular than it might otherwise earn on its merits. Some people might be afraid to vote to close a question that had the founder's name on it. Basically you did what you did, and probably the right thing, but ended up swimming against the tide.

This reminds me of the joke between two employees. Number 1: That summer intern we just hired is way behind the curve, isn't he? Number 2: Yes he is, but I wouldn't go around saying it, because he's the nephew of the big boss.

Answer 6

I see that both the OP and I have good points...

Correct.

I can completely relate to @user115232 's experience.

I asked a great question about the nature of the Penn State scandal on Workplace.SE. In spite of its "greatness", as originally stated/phrased, it may not have been a perfect fit for Workplace.SE.

Rather than give the question any chance to breathe, a diamond-mod unilaterally closed it, less than 10 minutes after I posted it, and marked it as 'Too Localized'.

Every other user on the site (including the other moderators) agreed - There's no way "On God's Green Earth" that a question about the Penn State scandal could possibly be construed as 'Too Localized'. [i.e. The ramifications could not have been larger, People will be discussing it for hundreds of years after we're all in the ground, etc.]

https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334/too-localized-are-you-kidding-me

Unfortunately, rather than rehabilitate the question and follow @Mark Trapp 's 'Summer of Love' advice, the moderators decided to "Circle the Wagons" and keep it closed as "Not Constructive".

So eventually, after @Anna Lear intervened, I agreed and yielded. As stated/phrased, it wasn't a great fit for Workplace.SE. But similar to @user115232 's experience, the unnecessarily abrupt close action of the original mod really left a sour taste in my mouth. It was a borderline bad fit for Workplace.SE. There was just no need for the abrupt close and snarky 'Hi! Welcome to Workplace.SE! Please read the FAQ.' comment.

But then again, I'll remind Programmers.SE users: This is exactly what separates Programmers.SE from some other stackexchange sites. Programmers.SE moderators actually care!! We can all cite instances where @YannisRizos had doubts about a question, but waited for the Community to weigh in before wielding his unilateral close vote. [Emphasis: This is so refreshing, it's scary!]

So in conclusion, @user115232: I understand your complaint and hope that you're able to work with the Programmers.SE mods and the community to get your question answered. [We have it good over here. :)]